10.5061/DRYAD.K59M37F
Pomeranz, Justin Page
University of Canterbury
Thompson, Ross M.
University of Canberra
Poisot, Timothée
Département de Sciences BiologiquesUniversité de Montréal Montréal QC Canada
Harding, Jon S.
University of Canterbury
Pomeranz, Justin P. F.
University of Canterbury
Data from: Inferring predator-prey interactions in food webs
Dryad
dataset
2018
Trait-matching
Food-web structure
Food-web inference
2018-11-20T12:48:46Z
2018-11-20T12:48:46Z
en
https://doi.org/10.1111/2041-210x.13125
196520 bytes
1
CC0 1.0 Universal (CC0 1.0) Public Domain Dedication
1. Food webs are a powerful way to represent the diversity, structure, and
function of ecological systems. However, the accurate description of food
webs requires significant effort in time and resources, limiting their
widespread use in ecological studies. Newly published methods allow for
the inference of feeding interactions using proxy variables. Here, we
compare the accuracy of two recently described methods, as well as
describe a composite model of the two, for the inference of feeding
interactions using a large, well-described dataset. 2. Both niche and
neutral processes are involved in determining whether or not two species
will form a feeding link in communities. Three different models for
determining niche constraints of feeding interactions are compared, and
all three models are extended by incorporating neutral processes, based on
relative abundances. The three models compared here infer niche processes
through 1) phylogenetic relationships, 2) local species trait
distributions (e.g. body size), and 3) a composite of phylogeny and local
traits. 3. We show that all three methods perform well at predicting
individual species interactions, and that these individual predictions
scale up to the network level, resulting in food-web structure of inferred
networks being similar to their empirical counterparts. 4. Our results
indicate that inferring food-web structure using phylogenies can be an
efficient way of getting summary webs with minimal data, and offers a
conservative test of changes in food-web structure, particularly when
there is low species turnover between sites. Inferences made using traits
requires more data, but allows for greater understanding of the mechanisms
underlying trophic interactions. A composite model of the two methods
provides a framework for investigating the importance of how phylogeny,
trait distributions, and relative abundances, affect species interactions,
and network structure.
Adjacency_matricesThis folder contains 21 binary adjacency matrices. The
first column contains the row names of the matrix. The columns represent
taxa as consumers, and the rows represent taxa as resources. Aij = 1 when
column j consumes resource i, and 0 otherwise. The original matrices can
be found in Thompson and Townsend, 1999, 2004. (DOI: 10.2307/3546998; DOI:
10.1080/00288330.2004.9517265). Adjacency matrices are modified from
originals as described in main text. Briefly, the taxa have been
aggregated to resolve naming discrepancies, and only the predator-prey
interactions have been retained.Taxa_dry_weight_abundanceThis file
contains estimated dry weight and numerical densities for 17 stream
communities in New Zealand. Dry weight estimates and numerical densities
were calculated as described in main text. Columns: "food.web"
indicates which community the data come from. "taxa" is a
character string for each taxon found in the community which has data on
dry weights and abundance. "dw" is the estimated dry weight in
grams for a given taxa. "no.m2" is the estimated number of
individuals per meter squared.niche_forbidden_taxaThis is a small table of
taxa which are considered to be "niche forbidden" e.g. do not
consumer animal prey. See main text for
details.other_feeding_interactionsThis file contains data on published
feeding interactions from New Zealand streams. Each row represents a
consumer-resource interaction, and contains phylogenetic information for
both the consumer and resource. The "res." prefix in columns
indicates that column refers to the resource, and the "con."
prefix refers to data on the consumer. The "source.id" column
indicates the original citation for where the data came from.taxonomyThis
file contains phylogenetic information for taxa in this study. The
"name" column matches taxa names used in the study. i.e. not all
taxa are resolved to the same level, and this is used to access other
phylogenetic information. The "minimum.res.method" and
"minimum.con.method" are specific to the WebBuilder analysis.
See main text for more details.
New Zealand